Jan-Willem

Auteur: walter

  • LockCon 2019 – impressioning

    Some 40+ people participated in the impressioning championship. In the first round, one lock needed to be impressioned within an hour. The locks were sponsored by Abus and they gave us keyed-alike cilinders with a rather shallow profile. Within the hour, 32 people opened their lock.

    The 6 fastest went on to compete in the A-final, the 6 runners up in the B-final. Both groups needed to open 6 locks in less than 15 minutes each. These were locks with more difficult profiles.

    The result:
    A-Final
    1. Manfred
    2. Jan-Willem
    3. Jord
    4. Walter
    5. Cocolitos
    6. Jos
    B-Final
    7. Alex
    8. Oli
    9. Mathias
    10. Torsten
    11. Datagram
    12. Rebecca

    All the times scored in the A and B finals
    Jos hands the first prize to Manfred

    (Post by Walter)

  • LockCon 2019

    For the 11th time in a row, Toool has organised LockCon, the international conference on lock sport. Before that, it was the Dutch Open Lockpicking Championship, and this championship is now incorporated in LockCon, together with an impressioning competition and a leverlock competition.

    With over 100 attendees last weekend, it was bigger than ever, but it still retained that cosy family get-together feeling. Information sharing, meeting up with old friend, meeting new friends, swapping locks and participating in championships in a relaxed environment, where everybody participates in making it a success is what it’s all about.

    It was nice to see delegations from all parts of the world, from nearby to far away (even including Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand).

    The Italian delegation brought in a fine selection of Parma products, including wine, ham and cheese.

    I would like to thank our sponsors, beginning with Abus, long-time sponsor of the many locks and blank keys for the impressioning competition. Datagram sponsored the badges and trophys. All the prizes were sponsored by Sparrows, Multipick, TOKOZ, PACLOCK, Parmakey, M2 serrurerie and Oli.

    Prizes

    (Post by Walter)

  • Key duplication revisited

    A few weeks ago, we tested the Quick Key Easy Pro kit from Multipick, which turned out to work very well for duplicating a BKS Janus key and even a DOM Diamant key.

    This time, we wanted to see if you really need such as expensive kit. First, we focus on the metal. Can we use cheap rose metal we obtained from the internet? We use the moulds we created earlier. The answer: yes, this works fine, for both keys. Our first attempt failed as the two halfs of the mould were not properly aligned, but that is “operator error”.

    Next, we try to see if there are alternatives to the moulding material. We use cuttlebone, that is also used by silver smiths. We use a standard key to start with. The duplicate looks promising, but does not work. Again, we blame the alignment of the two parts of the mould. Some further testing is necessary. The cuttlebone is too brittle to be used in combination with the holder from the Multipick kit.

  • Attacking masterkeyed systems

    A couple of years ago one of our members, Jos Weyers, came up with a novel method to attack masterkeysystems. If you know Jos, it’s probably not at all surprising that this method mainly consists of impressioning. Attacking masterkeyed systems that way has several distinct advantages; no need to take a lock apart, no need for huge numbers of blanks, no need to have access to a working key, no guessing if your new key is indeed the master you are looking for, to name just a few. After keeping this knowledge within a rather small community for some time, it is now out in the open due to a talk Jos did at OzSecCon in Melbourne this year.Which off course includes live demo’s right there on stage.

    https://twitter.com/kylieengineer/status/1139694231964938240

    (masterkeysystem supplied and pinned up by Holly Poer , “southpark-esque lock animations” by JanWillem Markus)

  • Key duplication

    Although at Toool, we normally pick locks without having a key, it is also interesting to occasionally look at other ways of opening a lock. I got my hands on a Quick Key Easy Pro kit from Multipick (not affiliated) and decided to test it out. I took it to the Toool meeting with three locks to test it out on.

    First up was a BKS Janus lock. I combines the two substances to make the mould, but spent too much time kneading it, it was already partially hardened when I wanted to press the key in. The second try, I hurried up a bit more and it worked nicely. I heated up a pellet of metal and poured it in the mould.

    After a short wait, out came the key.

    This key is quite sturdy and is thus easy to create using this technique. But the tolerances are quite small. Does the key work?

    Yes, it does! And that for the first key I am making with this kit. I’m impressed. Because this key was a success, I decided to take on an even bigger challenge and duplicate a DOM Diamant key. This key is very hard to duplicate, as it has very thin pieces of metal going down the key. The first attempt yielded a key that was incomplete. The metal had not gone all the way in. I melted that key again, made it slightly warmer and tried again. The second time, the key that came out had a hole in the middle, but it had metal in all the important places. And what do you know: this key worked first time around!

    Jos made a video of me duplicating the key. I hope you enjoy watching as much as I enjoyed copying the key. Sorry for talking Dutch in the video 🙂

    Walter.

  • Lishi Schlage impressioning tool

    The company Lishi is mostly known for their decoding tools for several brands of cars. Now, they also have decoding tools for Schlage and Kwikset locks, that works similarly.

    Although not as much a sport as lockpicking using standard picking tools, we are always eager at Toool to try out new tools. Not long ago, Jan-Willem already tweeted about the tool:

    Now, we also have a demonstration of the Schlage tool, done by Jos:

    Enjoy!

    Walter.

  • East German secret policy and lockpicking

    More than 12 years ago, Oli Diederichsen wrote a book about impressioning. It had quite an effect and nowadays we have impressioning championships in which working keys are filed in amazing times.

    And now, Oli has written a new book (called “Stasi Secret Service Tools: Die geheimen Schlossöffnungswerkzeuge der Abteilung VIII“), about the former East German secret service and their research into locks and lock opening. They made combs (called “heavenly key”) and special opening tools for Trabant cars, the only car a normal person in Eastern Germany could buy. But they were also interested in locks from other places, including high security locks.

    At the previous LockCon, Oli already showed his ongoing work including some really interesting pictures of the Stasi tools. The book is available in German only.

  • The Room

    Toool NL organised “The Room” as a side-event of the 2019 edition of the <a href=”https://hackerhotel.nl” target=_blank>Hacker Hotel</a> conference. Bugs, scenario, gameplay, set dressing and props by Jan-Willem, Rob and Jos. The talk about The Room is available on YouTube:

    All vids recorded by Bix, with gear supplied by duh-events.nl, except the POVvid, which was recorded by https://leukemensen.nl/.
    Camera’s were still running when Jos went through the room to snap pictures for the (impromptu) talk above, which gives a good indication of where (almost) all of the treasures were hidden. These are links to videos of some teams running “the Room”:

    It was great fun!

  • Opening a vintage lock

    A while back, somebody visited one of our Toool meetings. This gentleman brought with him a punch clock device. I am not sure in what setting it was used, but found one example on the internet of such a clock being used in a prison, where the warden would register their rounds through the facility

    Punch clock

    The keys were lost, so we were asked to try to open it without damage. The lock looked easy enough..

    Still, we could not open it fully.

    In the end, Jos took it home to look at it a bit further and in the end he was able to open it. We had not expected a three lever lock when we started.

    Finally, we had a nice view of the insides, where you can see the mechanism to transport a paper tape and an ink ribbon.

  • Lockpicking escape rooms

    Eric runs a lock shop (Au P’tit Clou Serrurerie) in Belgium, in the city of Beauraing (near Dinant and also near a degree confluence point). He has also set up a few escape rooms with a lockpicking angle. If you’ve ever been in an escape room, you know they often involve locks to be opened, to get to the next stage. But the the escape rooms Eric designed, are completely in a lock theme. One is based on the story of Charles Hobbs. Hobbs was the first to defeat the security of the locks of Jeremiah Chubb and Joseph Bramah. We still call the tools he used ‘Hobbs Hooks’.

    When Eric saw the talk of Tim Jenkin at LockCon 2017, he was inspired to build another escape room about his amazing story of escaping from a Pretoria jail as well. So if you would like to relive that experience, be sure to visit Trésors Cachés!